Remember drinking the neon-green margarita mix at college parties? It's hard to know exactly what scary sweeteners and artificial flavors filled those plastic bottles! Thankfully, there's been a bumper crop of newer options made with lime juice and real sugar. In an effort to find actually good margarita mixes, we picked up five finer options (all available at BevMo) so you can throw a fancy fiesta with margaritas that are convenient to make, yet also deliver in the flavor department.
McDonald's Egg White Delight McMuffin (left) and Egg McMuffin (right)
I take whole milk (or even half-and-half) in my tea and have been known to add an extra yolk to my morning scramble, so to say that I'm not the intended demographic for the latest McDonald's offering — the Egg White Delight McMuffin — is an understatement. Still, I tried to put my bias aside. I snapped up the Gabby Douglas-endorsed breakfast sandwich and sat down with our food team to see if it stacks up to the beloved original. Thanks to a swap of egg whites for the original griddled egg, the Egg White Delight McMuffin has 50 calories fewer and nearly half the fat of its classic counterpart. There's one other subtle substitution — white cheddar instead of American cheese — but the new option is otherwise unchanged.
Though McDonald's has found itself at the center of egg controversy in recent years, the star of the McMuffin is undoubtedly still the egg. How would a switch-up in the sandwich's standout ingredient, we wondered, affect the chain's bestselling breakfast sandwich? Keep reading for the answer and to find out which McMuffin we'd pick.
We're seeing a new food trend heat up the condiment aisle: spicy ketchups. In less than a month, three ketchup companies have sent over their spiced varieties: Sir Kensington's Spiced Ketchup ($7), Solutions Condiments Hot Tomato Ketchup ($5), and Heinz Tomato Ketchup Blended With Real Jalapeño ($5). We put them to the test in a taste-off to determine the best spicy ketchup. Did the spiciest win? Or did the most ketchup-tasting one win in a landslide? See the results.
With pressure from the government to produce more healthful food, what's a packaged food giant to do? Why, stealthily sneak in vegetables.
Just ask Kraft Foods: the manufacturer made headlines when it began rolling out boxes of new Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Dinner Veggie Pasta alongside its traditional blue-box mac and cheese last month.
The two products, according to Kraft, taste the same — but eat the former, and you'll wind up getting half a serving of vegetables (the company freeze-dries cauliflower, pulverizes it, then mixes it along with flour to make the macaroni pasta).
Curious to know if the veggie version really tasted the same, I pitted the new blue box against its classic counterpart in a blind tasting. Read on to find out if there was a difference in flavor.
Next time you've got a hankering for vegetable juice, I've got a challenge for you: Head to the nearest grocery store and buy two brands — V8 Original and Mott's Garden Blend — and see for yourself who produces nature's better nectar. We did the same recently in the office, after hearing that Mott's had just released a brand-new bottling of 100 percent vegetable juice. Which came out on top? Find out when you keep reading.
"Crispy. Tender. New," the Burger King website declares of its latest menu item, BK Chicken Tenders. Funny: they might've been new on the BK lineup, but we could've sworn we'd seen them somewhere. Oh, right, on the menu at every McDonald's worldwide for the last three decades as Chicken McNuggets.
Much like the BK Breakfast Muffin was to the McDonald's Sausage McMuffin, the BK Chicken Tenders are near-carbon copies of their Golden Arched counterparts. (When asked to comment, Burger King remarked, "We don't provide details on our secret recipe.")
McDonald's sells its nuggets in packages of four, six, and 10; Burger King's are available in boxes of four, eight, and 20. In our taste test, we learned that just about everything, right down to the packaging, is identical — except, we discovered, with regards to taste. To see how fast food's top two stacked up against each other in a chicken nugget faceoff, read more.
It's been a while since I've consumed a traditional candy bar, but I'm a sucker for comparison taste tests, so when we received a shipment of Milky Way's latest product, Simply Caramel, I was dying to compare it to the original.
Unlike the classic Milky Way, which contains a layer of nougat under a layer of caramel, the interior of the Milky Way Simply Caramel is — you guessed it — nothing but caramel. I was expecting it to taste a bit like Rolos, only in bar form. In the end, I wasn't too far off — compared to a Rolo, the Simply Caramel had a milder, less pronounced caramel flavor.
It's ironic that the Simply Caramel has 2 grams more fat and 25 more calories than its original counterpart, because it seems to be skimpier on the flavor (and is actually 0.14 ounces lighter than its original counterpart). The original has an added textural component with the nougat, and more of a fudgey chocolate flavor. In the end, I'll stick to what I know best — a classic Milky Way.
Have you tried the new candy bar? What were your thoughts?
My favorite kind of taste test to conduct is a face-off between two like items, whether they're sausage breakfast muffins or fruit and nut milk chocolate bars. So when a kit arrived from Better Oats challenging me to compare its oatmeal to that of Quaker Oats, of course I couldn't pass it up. Our taste-off's surprising conclusion, and other observations, when you keep on reading.
It was to my fortune — and misfortune — that a box of Lindt Raisin & Nuts chocolate bars arrived in the office today. Never one for self-restraint, I went for the chocolate as soon as the afternoon snack craving hit. As I was enjoying it, I couldn't help but wonder how it stood up to its Cadbury counterpart, the classic Fruit & Nut bar, in a side-by-side comparison. Find out how both fared after the jump
